edit: from
»archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldi..
"..
The problem exists in the scanning engine - in the routine that determines the file type. If some file types (file types tested are .BAT, .HTML and .EML) changed to have the MAGIC BYTE of the EXE files (MZ) at the beginning, then many antivirus programs will be unable to detect the malicious file. It will break the normal flow of the antivirus scanning and many existent and future viruses will be undetected. ..."

I wonder how would AT software fare, some of them could be vulnerable too.